B is for Basketball

Munchky is 34 months

T-Rex is 17 months

We had a lot of fun this week celebrating "March Madness" this week with a unit on basketball.  Unfortunately, we've been battling horrific teething (2 yr molars at 17 months?) and colds again!  T-Rex basically wanted me to just hold him much of the week then Mommy and Munchky got sick.  

Playing Basketball

 

Passing

Dribbling

Catching a Pass

  

Shooting

Celebrating

The boys love the ball pit we made from the pool.

We did some sorting and counting activities with the balls and played where's the brown ball....as there was only one.

Munchky let T-Rex try out the pound a ball tower for the first time.

The boys decided to help Mommy by sweeping up the balls.  (then throwing them again)

We got the families' sneakers together  to do a shoe matching activity I saw over at The Princess and the Tot. After matching we lined them up according to size.  "Daddy's are BIG!"

Mommy's must be stinky!"

The boys were excited to get some new Melissa and Doug Toys and wanted to try them out right away.

We're introducing T-Rex to shapes, colors and numbers. He doesn't seem too interested in shapes but tries to say numbers and colors.  Right now "two" and "yellow" are his favorites. And of course chewing on them.







Munchky is funny in that when the shape is not turned the right way to put in the puzzle, he turns the board to match the shape.


We didn't get to do some great basketball printables found at Two Teaching Mommies and some crafts I had planned so we we'll continue our basketball theme next week.  

Calender Time

As the boys are both under three, we don't have much of a "formal" calender time...we don't even have a calender!  We basically:
1. start with a morning prayer, 
2. determine what the weather is and then.Muncky puts up the weather card on our weather page from 1+1+1=1.
3. we sing this weather song.
4..I put up the day of the week and we sing this Days of the week song. 
5. We might sing other songs like the B-I-B-L-E (T-Rex now yells "b-ble" at the end, it's so cute), Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star or a Munchky favorite "Take Me Out To the Ball Game.."

Now:

Munchky   

stands in his "car" - this cute little rug from Ikea - T-rex is free to roam

loves doing the weather (he even changes it throughout the day, so we can sing again) 

is not interested in the days of week at all.

Coming Soon (after munchky is 3)

We'll be introducing 

the Calender - hopefully this will help him understand days better.

the Flag and the Pledge of Allegiance  

Memory Verse (we started this in Jan and munchky did great memorizing the first one, then the next week he refused to say a new one, just kept wanting to do the previous weeks.) LOL I think he thinks there's only one. 

For T-Rex:

Color of the week

Number of the Week

Shape of the Week 
Please see the calender page at 1+1+1=1
for more calender time ideas.


To  see what other Moms are doing this week for Tot School visit 1+1+1=1.

M is for Music

 M is for Music

Munchky is 33 months

T-Rex is 16 months

This week our focus was on music.  The boys had a blast especially Munchky who loves everything having to do with music.  The boys had fun playing on their instruments - thanks to the home's previous owners who left a bunch behind!

'

This week we played "I Love a Parade" CD and Munchky had fun marching around the pole in our tot room.

Munchky already knew a lot of instrument names from Baby Einstein's "Meet the Orchestra" DVD.  But thanks to these instrument cards from Counting Coconuts,  he has been introduced to new instruments.  For the past couple of weeks I have been whining commenting that Munchky won't sort.  Well last week as I was getting the unit ready, he took a stack of instrument cards I had just laminated and went into the living room.  About 10 minutes later, I went in, he asked me a couple of questions about the instruments, I then noticed that he SORTED the cards according to what section of the orchestra they were in. (the Baby Einstein DVD introduces the instruments by section). I tried to get him to sort again during tot school.....but no.

Here he is playing a matching game with them

.T-Rex also enjoyed looking at them and trying to say their names. He is really trying to speak now and is so much fun hearing (and deciphering) his new words.

I made these rhythm counting cards to introduce Munchky to the idea of counting beats.  (note: I did not drill him on these)  We would pull a card out from a bag and then count the beats on the card.  We did this by clapping, stomping our feet, slapping our knees and jumping.. 

I made these music pre-writing sheets to practice lines and circles and introduce him to the concept that notes have names.

 Music sheet 1   Music sheet 2

We also worked on these piano size sequencing cards.

The Mad Stacker strikes again.  This week T-Rex found new things to stack.

Here he is working with our new rainbow stacker. (our old one is missing most of its rings).   When it arrived there was a surprising amount of fighting over it..  Munchky even took it with him for nap time.

 Stacking the paint cups.

While Munchky was working on this M do-a-dot page from COAH, T-Rex collected the caps and stacked them.  He eventually got 5 caps on (he kept bending over to get a cap off the floor and the ones stacked would fall off).  It was quite comical but he never gave up!

After he was done stacking, T-Rex found another use for the caps.  He went over` to the pound a ball and dropped the caps in the holes and watched them roll down (so much easier than hammering those balls).  Pretty soon his brother joined in.

One of Munchky's favorite activities - painting!

He looks so Big in this picture.

With this music craft, we talked about the different shapes and how they are used to make music and how were they are placed represents different sounds. And of course he had fun gluing!

We did a transfer activity with glass pebbles and glass jars.  This was a big hit with both boys, they played with it for about 15-30 minutes each day.  We had a small, medium and large jar and I demonstrated how each held different amounts of pebbles and how each had a different sound.  Of course they just loved dropping, pouring and sometimes throwing the pebbles and loved the clanking sounds.

He just looks so fascinated! and yes he is eating a cookie while doing this.

T-Rex loved this colander activity that I saw on a few other moms' blogs (sorry I didn't write down which).

He couldn't quite manage to get the pipe cleaners in the holes so Mom helped.  Munchky, however hated this activity b/c this was his "basket" for catching balls and he kept trying to take it away.  I may have to get another one at the dollar tree.

Another big hit in our house is banging on playing the piano.  Munchky insists that music must be on the piano and open, then he turns the pages as he is playing.

The boys really loved listening to music this week during tot school and especially enjoyed the Peter and the Wolf book and CD.

To see what other Moms are doing visit 1+1+1=1.